at once, yet the faults, follies, and vices within me seem to fill me altogether, each in turn, and yet altogether.  In fact, they put me in mind of two liquids with which I once saw an Italian conjurer perform a curious trick.  He filled a glass with a certain liquid, which looked like water, up to the very brim, and then poured in a considerable quantity of another liquid without increasing the liquid in the glass by a drop.  Now sometimes my folly seems to fill me so completely, that I should think there was no room for vices, but those vices find some means to slip in, without incommoding me in the least.  However, I will leave you now to read your letters, and to wonder at your sage and prudent friend, the Earl of Sunbury, having introduced to your acquaintance, and recommended to your friendship, one who has made half the capitals of Europe ring with his pranks.  The secret is, Wilton, that the Earl knows both me and you.  He pays you the high compliment of thinking you can be the companion of a very faulty man, without acquiring his faults; and he knows that, though I cannot cure myself of my own errors, I hate them too much to wish any one to imitate them.  When you have done reading,” he added, “come and join me at Monsieur Faubert’s Riding School, in the lane going up to the Oxford Road:  I see your horse at the door—­I will get one there, and we will have a ride in the country.  By heavens, what a beautiful picture!  It is quite a little gem.  That child’s head must be a Correggio.”

“I believe it is,” replied Wilton:  “I saw it accidentally at an auction, and bought it for a mere trifle.”

“You have the eye of a judge,” replied his companion.

“Do not be long ere you join me;” and looking at every little object of ornament or luxury that the room contained, standing a minute or two before another picture, taking up, and examining all over, a small bronze urn, that stood on one of the tables, and criticising the hilts of two or three of Wilton’s swords, that stood in the corner of the room, he made his way out, like Hamlet, “without his eyes,” and left his new acquaintance to read his letter in peace.

In that letter, which was in every respect most kind, Wilton found that the Earl gave a detailed account of the character of the young nobleman who had just left him.  He represented him, very much as he had represented himself, full of follies, and, unfortunately, but too much addicted to let those follies run into vices.  “Though he neither gambled nor drank for pleasure,” the Earl said, “yet, as if for variety, he would sometimes do both to excess.  In other respects, he had lived a life of great profligacy, seeming utterly careless of the reproaches of any one, and rather taking means to make any fresh act of licence generally known, than to conceal it.  Nor is this,” continued the Earl, “from that worst of all vanities, which attaches fame to what is infamous, and confounds notoriety with renown, but rather from a sort of daringness of disposition, which prompts him to avow openly any act to which there may be risk attached.  With all these bad qualities,” the Earl proceeded, “there are many good ones.  To be bold as a lion is but a corporeal endowment, but he adds to that the most perfect sincerity and frankness.